Trotter v. Federal Insurance Co.

865 So. 2d 411, 2004 Miss. App. LEXIS 107, 2004 WL 237373
CourtCourt of Appeals of Mississippi
DecidedFebruary 10, 2004
DocketNo. 2002-CA-00155-COA
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 865 So. 2d 411 (Trotter v. Federal Insurance Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Mississippi primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Trotter v. Federal Insurance Co., 865 So. 2d 411, 2004 Miss. App. LEXIS 107, 2004 WL 237373 (Mich. Ct. App. 2004).

Opinion

SOUTHWICK, P.J.,

for the Court.

¶ 1. Eddie Mae Trotter filed suit against her employer’s insurance company for bad faith failure to pay her claim. Trotter appeals the trial court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the insurance company. There is no issue of material fact and no mistake of law. We affirm.

¶ 2. Trotter was employed as a nurse for Riley Home Health Services. In the course and scope of employment, Trotter was involved in a car accident with an uninsured motorist in her personal vehicle on May 30, 1997. In the employment agreement, Riley required that Trotter have her own automobile insurance. Trotter had purchased a policy from Atlanta Casualty Insurance Company, but it had lapsed by the time of the accident. Trotter’s claim for uninsured motorist coverage was denied by Riley’s insurance company, Federal Insurance Company. Trotter sued Federal claiming that the company had acted in bad faith in denying the claim. Also named in the suit was Meyer & Rosenbaum, Inc., the insurance agency that assisted Riley in obtaining the Federal policy.

¶ 3. The record of this case contains approximately 2000 pages of documents. Federal filed for summary judgment on the basis that Trotter did not qualify as an insured under the uninsured motorist section of Riley’s policy. Meyer & Rosen-baum filed a similar motion. The trial court granted both motions. Trotter appeals claiming that she was an insured under the policy and her vehicle was a covered auto, or in the alternative she should have been allowed to conduct more discovery before the motion for summary judgment was granted.

DISCUSSION

1. Uninsured motorist coverage

¶ 4. The issue in this case is whether Trotter is entitled to uninsured motorist coverage under the policy issued to Riley by Federal. This form of coverage is addressed by statute:

No automobile liability insurance policy or contract shall be issued or delivered ... unless it contains an endorsement or provisions undertaking to pay the insured all sums which he shall be legally entitled to recover as damages for property damage from the owner or operator of an uninsured motor vehicle, within limits which shall be no less than those set forth in the Mississippi Motor Vehicle Safety Responsibility Law.... The coverage herein required shall not be [414]*414applicable where any insured named in the policy shall reject the coverage in writing and provided further, that unless the named insured requests such coverage in writing, such coverage need not be provided in any renewal policy where the named insured had rejected the coverage in connection with a policy previously issued to him by the same insurer.

Miss.Code Ann. § 83-11-101(2) (Rev.1999).

¶ 5. This statute states that this form of coverage exists unless any insured named in the policy rejects the coverage in writing. The Supreme Court has noted that the legislature created uninsured motorist coverage in 1956 because of the growth in the number of uninsured drivers. Glennon v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 812 So.2d 927, 930 (Miss.2002). Later, the Mississippi Uninsured Motorist Act was enacted to require such coverage in all insurance policies unless the coverage was specifically rejected by the insured in writing. Id.; Miss.Code Ann. §§ 83-11-101 to -111 (Rev.1999). Whether an employee’s claims against an uninsured motorist are covered by the issued policy, and if not, whether the coverage was properly rejected, are the issues that face us.

2. Riley’s contract with Federal

¶ 6. Contract interpretation is a mixed question of law and fact. When there is no ambiguity in a contract, the court decides its meaning as a matter of law. Miss. Transp. Comm’n v. Ronald Adams Contractor, Inc., 753 So.2d 1077, 1088 (Miss.2000). In these instances, “the contract must be enforced as written.” Id. If the contract is determined to be ambiguous, then the question of the meaning of its terms usually should be submitted to a jury. Clark v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 725 So.2d 779, 781 (Miss.1998).

¶ 7. The trial court found that the contract was unambiguous. The court held that the only coverage that Riley had acquired for claims created by uninsured motorists was applicable to the vehicles that Riley owned. Trotter was driving her own vehicle when the accident occurred.

¶ 8. Two different types of coverage have been highlighted in the case. Even though the policy terms regarding uninsured motorist claims are directly applicable, Trotter also discusses the liability coverage and argues that the language in that section affects her claim for uninsured motorist protection. We will analyze both sections of the policy.

¶ 9. In the policy that was in effect at the time of this accident, a separate endorsement appeared regarding the uninsured motorist provisions. In this endorsement, coverage was provided to an “insured” for compensatory damages caused by the owner or driver of an uninsured motor vehicle. An “insured” was defined as the named insured, Riley, and anyone occupying a covered automobile. The policy identified the vehicles that were “covered” for purposes of each type of coverage. For uninsured motorist coverage, the policy provided that automobiles that Riley owned were the only ones that were covered.

¶ 10. Therefore, under the plain terms of the insurance contract, injuries suffered by an employee when driving her own vehicle would not be covered by the uninsured motorist provisions of her employer Riley’s policy. The trial court was correct that these terms were not ambiguous.

¶ 11. Trotter argues in the alternative that a separate endorsement to the policy redefined who was an insured for liability purposes, and that the result of that was to make all employees insured for uninsured motorist purposes unless they rejected coverage in writing. An endorsement entitled “Employees as Insureds” said that [415]*415the “following is added to the LIABILITY COVERAGE WHO IS AN INSURED provision: any employee of yours is an ‘insured’ while using a covered ‘auto’ you don’t own, hire or borrow in your business or personal affairs.” This was doubtless a business decision to have coverage to protect Riley in case an employee caused injuries to others.

¶ 12. Trotter seeks to transform that provision, which protects Riley and the employees from liability claims, into one that protects employees from the risks of collisions with uninsured motorists. The argument is that this provision redefined the category of “insured” for present purposes. Of course, under the plain language of the endorsement, it altered the definition solely for liability purposes. Liability is a different type of coverage than uninsured motorist coverage. No issue is presented to us of Trotter or Riley’s liability for damages to the other driver. The issue Trotter makes actually concerns whether identifying an employee as an insured for any purpose then requires that the employee reject uninsured motorist coverage in writing. We consider that point in the subsequent section that addresses the issue of rejecting coverage.

¶ 13.

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865 So. 2d 411, 2004 Miss. App. LEXIS 107, 2004 WL 237373, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/trotter-v-federal-insurance-co-missctapp-2004.